|
With all the hosed up poo poo and dead bodies in there I still laughed at this picture. Like the guy on the left is trying to awkwardly explain how his gun is so much nicer and more modern looking to the other guy who's jealous since him and everybody else just has dinky AKs. I know AUGs have been around for a while but still.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 16:52 |
|
|
# ? Apr 18, 2024 12:51 |
|
There's a bunch of AUGs around there, and actually it should have stirred a shitstorm here, as we're a neutral country with laws that prohibit the sale of arms to warzones (also via a 3rd party), but nobody gave a hoot that the Saudis or Qatar just shipped the guns that they bought from us over there.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 16:59 |
|
Cyrano4747 posted:
Wow, for a moment I thought my memories were wrong, since the rest of your post was so good, but, well: It's Fieseler Storch, sorry.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:08 |
|
Libluini posted:Wow, for a moment I thought my memories were wrong, since the rest of your post was so good, but, well: It's Fieseler Storch, sorry. The Storch is on my short list of planes I wish the flight sim IL-2 had as flyables. It sits just below the Po-2 on that list, but at least the Night Witches are starring in a roleplaying game now.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:18 |
|
Nenonen posted:Just history nerds blindly focusing on the few formations that were elite and had good equipment or at least were zealously dedicated to Hitler, and highly decorated veterans like Michael Wittmann. On the other hand very few people talk or write about Bosnian SS men or such. JaucheCharly posted:A friend asked me, and I have no clue how they do it, but these guys that snipe people there, how do they actually tell who is who if everybody wears the same stuff? Aside from the guys in the obvious black pyjamas. "Beyond this street, there's probably the enemy"?
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:37 |
|
bewbies posted:- The V2 was probably the single most advanced thing anyone built during the war Oh, I don't know about that one:
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:46 |
|
ninjahedgehog posted:Oh, I don't know about that one: I'd say that's more of a triumph of industrial power and resource mobilization than technical ingenuity. Kind of a microcosm of the war, that.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:22 |
|
quote:A lot of people also seem to think that being really good at killing the other guys is what it means to be "elite" as opposed to things like being too dumb/fanatical to run etc. Morale is a hugely under-rated part of military action in lay circles, so people never even think that the only difference between a Heer and SS unit in late 1944 might be "the SS guys actually volunteered for this poo poo". By the end of the war, some of the SS divisions were made up of conscripts. The 9th and 10th were apparently uncontroversial, but google doesn't exactly give you unbiased sources when you search about anything SS. The two divisions also spent most of their time on the Western front so who knows. Several SS divisions were lavished upon by Hitler, which is how "elite" units work in third-world militaries today. According to Heer officers, the SS men were very driven but often wasteful with their fanaticism. That's useful in some cases and unhelpful in others. And you can't even begin to dig into their war crimes. The rest of the Waffen SS were foreigners or volksdeutsch with a grudge against whatever slavic group was nearby. Estonian and Latvians in Russia, Albanians and Croats in Serbia etc. They're a whole lot of bad news on paper and you can just take it for granted that they were responsible for more atrocities than are officially documented. FAUXTON posted:It's kind of tough to really classify anything military as "good as a whole" if only because there will always be tradeoffs. Early Sherman tanks turned into flaming deathtraps, their guns were outclassed, etc. On the other hand, they made a lot of them very quickly and they were comparatively maneuverable. The T-34 was crudely built (to use a generous term) but what it lacked in reliability it made up in simplicity and quantity. Nazi equipment had huge drawbacks in stuff like raw material (i.e. steel) quality and quantity, and the complexity of poo poo like the Tiger's interleaved wheels meant it took a long time to manufacture and service. It just didn't meet the challenge of war against opponents with more industrial capacity, more resources, and higher quality raw materials, since a dead tank is a dead tank is a dead tank, and your ability to replace it matters a hell of a lot more than how many of the other guy's tanks it killed, once it's dead. The Nazis failed that test in no small part due to hubris. In 1942 Shermans were objectively superior to most German tanks. You're sort of describing things like they would be in an RTS, so I think you should be careful about oversimplifying the issue. The Soviets and Americans could produce more tanks because they had better manufacturing practices, not because T-34s were "crude". Azran posted:Second, what's the deal with nazi engineering. They have this "efficiency and unbeateable design" myth going on when a lot of their stuff was incredibly overengineered or just downright silly, but did they actually make anything "good" as a whole? I think the only pieces of equipment I've seen mentioned as good in their function are the MG42, the StuG IV and the stahlhelm. Am I grossly wrong? Interested to know where did they NOT gently caress up. Hitler had fostered an obsession in nutty projects, and so engineers in Nazi Germany spent a lot of time on stupid things but they didn't impact the organisation of the military as a whole, and they didn't make enough to matter. Are you really going to denigrate the Kar98k? It's a bolt-action rifle, it shoots, it loads, it's fine. Or the 8cm mortar? It's a tube. The vast majority of the Nazi military had the usual equipment of any other military. For the portion of the war when they were actually winning, they weren't even operating any wunderwaffe bullshit.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:23 |
|
bewbies posted:I'd say that's more of a triumph of industrial power and resource mobilization than technical ingenuity. Kind of a microcosm of the war, that. I thought the discovery and development of the atomic bomb required massive amount of technical expertise , they basically recruited every physicist that knew a single thing about quantum physics.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:29 |
|
FAUXTON posted:It's kind of tough to really classify anything military as "good as a whole" if only because there will always be tradeoffs. Early Sherman tanks turned into flaming deathtraps, their guns were outclassed, etc. On the other hand, they made a lot of them very quickly and they were comparatively maneuverable. The T-34 was crudely built (to use a generous term) but what it lacked in reliability it made up in simplicity and quantity. Nazi equipment had huge drawbacks in stuff like raw material (i.e. steel) quality and quantity, and the complexity of poo poo like the Tiger's interleaved wheels meant it took a long time to manufacture and service. It just didn't meet the challenge of war against opponents with more industrial capacity, more resources, and higher quality raw materials, since a dead tank is a dead tank is a dead tank, and your ability to replace it matters a hell of a lot more than how many of the other guy's tanks it killed, once it's dead. The Nazis failed that test in no small part due to hubris. At most the early M4s were just as fire-prone as any other tank in service, but by the later parts of the war it was perhaps the least likely tank to catch fire when hit. Tanks are full of propellant and propellant likes to burn. The 75mm M3 was a very good gun through '43 and still rather serviceable through the end of the war for the primary opponent of tanks. The 105mm did that job even better, while the 76 traded off some of the anti-infantry capabilities for a better anti-vehicle round. T-34 reliability issues are incredibly overstated and tend to be based on their issues at the start of the war where you have crews using them that aren't familiar with them. Edit: When the M4 first saw combat in North Africa it significantly outclassed everything it faced. Taerkar fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Oct 30, 2014 |
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:37 |
|
24 Nov. 1632 After a few years of nothing much happening in Saxony, the Thirty Years' War has started up there again; this time they're on the opposite side. They're raising some regiments. When you recruit people, you give them some money and tell them to show up at the Musterplatz when it opens. You make them swear to show up, to show up on time, and not to become garte people on the way, which means out-of-work soldiers loitering around and causing trouble. But there's no guarantee that they'll do this. What do? The people who drew up this mercenary contract between Johann George of Saxony and "our beloved cousin, Franz Alberecht of Saxony," decided that although the arriving soldiers are only obligated to be at the Musterplatz by the final day of the mustering, for every day they're there they'll get a small bonus. Which is a hell of an incentive. The Musterplatz will remain open for ten days. However, the quarters only open on the final day of the mustering. In addition, upon the enrollment of "each and every soldier," the Oberst, through his captains and officers, shall give him his money and "loudly announce that they are before the time, they must not remain on the Musterplatz." So, the earlier you get there, the more extra money you'll make, but the more time you have to kill before you can get to where you're going to live. The Elector of Saxony has just authorized a situation in which 2000 dudes with a lot of extra money in their purses are going to hang around in Dresden for up to ten days with nothing to do and nowhere to stay. Someone did not think this through. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Oct 31, 2014 |
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:44 |
|
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess lots of drinking, whoring, and general public disturbances followed.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:50 |
|
Cyrano4747 posted:I'm going to go out on a limb and guess lots of drinking, whoring, and general public disturbances followed. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Oct 30, 2014 |
# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:56 |
|
HEY GAL posted:
I am completely unsurprised this happened in Saxony, because the above is pretty much a description of the life of John George I
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:30 |
|
blackmongoose posted:I am completely unsurprised this happened in Saxony, because the above is pretty much a description of the life of John George I Edit: He still doesn't drink as much as Augustus the Strong! HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Oct 30, 2014 |
# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:37 |
|
ninjahedgehog posted:Oh, I don't know about that one: I don't remember where it was said, but I seem to recall it stated that the Germans spent significantly more resources on the V2, than the US spent on the atomic bomb. So. Yeah. Edit: VVV that's probably true, but it is still a surprising fact. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Oct 30, 2014 |
# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:39 |
|
If that is true I think that would be due more to the horrible inefficiencies in German industries at the time than anything else.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:43 |
|
Nenonen posted:Just history nerds blindly focusing on the few formations that were elite and had good equipment or at least were zealously dedicated to Hitler, and highly decorated veterans like Michael Wittmann. On the other hand very few people talk or write about Bosnian SS men or such. The SS had a massive propaganda mill, and so you have people like Wittmann and Korner with huge kill claims associated with their names. Carius straight up said that their scores were bullshit and Wittmann's crew was plastered with decorations they could not possibly receive. Nobody bothered double checking their records after the war was over though, so you have low effort researchers rubbing themselves raw over fictional K:D ratios 70 years later. As for effective German weapons, all the wrong ones get praise. The "legendary and feared 88" had inferior HE action to medium tank guns, had mediocre AP performance for its caliber (matched by Soviet 85 and eclipsed by American 90 mm guns), and no advantage in precision. The KwK 40, on the other hand, is an excellent gun, but largely ignored. The PzIII? No German tank influenced Soviet tank design more, but people are obsessed with the Tiger for some reason. There is lots of kudos to hand out, but hardly anything designed past 1943 deserves any.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:27 |
|
Fangz posted:I don't remember where it was said, but I seem to recall it stated that the Germans spent significantly more resources on the V2, than the US spent on the atomic bomb. That would have to be as a proportion of war effort, because the Manhattan project was the kind of ridiculously expensive thing that only the US could afford.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:42 |
|
Fangz posted:I don't remember where it was said, but I seem to recall it stated that the Germans spent significantly more resources on the V2, than the US spent on the atomic bomb. The V2 cost about 2 billion Reichsmarks (Tooze), the atom bomb cost around 2 billion dollars (http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/manhattan). It was about 2.5 Reichsmarks to the dollar (http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/currency.htm) in 1939. The B-29 program cost around 2.5 billion. Of course, how comparable these numbers are given, for example, the V-2 being built with slave labor ...
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:01 |
|
How is Carius and stuff like Tigers in the Mud regarding the whole Wehrmacht fetishizing thing, anyway? You'd think a guy who drove around a Tiger, is still alive, and named his pharmacy Tiger Apothecary would get a lot of attention from that sort of crowd.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:13 |
|
Tigers in the Mud ends with an appendix containing something like 30+ pages of reports Carius's mechanic filed after the Tiger's many, many technical problems, so probably the real cultists wouldn't be exactly enamoured. Carius also states about how the crew didn't like the tank at first (but eventually came around to it). I think that Tigers or Panthers get a lot of bad rap today because of the rise of the Wehrmacht fanboys on the internet, while in reality they were good vehicles with imposing looks and a fearsome reputation that often grows into "unbeatable superweapon" type reverence, to which they just can't live up. I still like them, though.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:51 |
|
bewbies posted:I'd say that's more of a triumph of industrial power and resource mobilization than technical ingenuity. Kind of a microcosm of the war, that. Uh. It needed industry and resources, sure, but the atom bomb didnt also require serious technical ingenuity? Really?
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:53 |
|
Alchenar posted:That would have to be as a proportion of war effort, because the Manhattan project was the kind of ridiculously expensive thing that only the US could afford. The Manhattan project wasn't that ridiculously expensive, the B-29 cost more. Cost about $24 billion in present dollars. Compare that to the F-35 and weep. feedmegin posted:Uh. It needed industry and resources, sure, but the atom bomb didnt also require serious technical ingenuity? Really? Yes and no. The uranium bomb was pretty much a straightforward engineering exercise, the design was simple enough that they didn't even need to test it. The difficult part there was just the infrastructure needed to enrich enough uranium to build the thing. The plutonium bomb was harder and there was a lot more tricky math and raw experimentation required to figure out how to build an implosion bomb, but the expense of doing that was dwarfed by the expense of producing the plutonium.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 22:01 |
|
feedmegin posted:Uh. It needed industry and resources, sure, but the atom bomb didnt also require serious technical ingenuity? Really? Of course it did, I didn't say otherwise. That said, I'm pretty comfortable saying the biggest obstacles facing atomic programs were those of resource and industry.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 22:05 |
|
Someone mentioned somewhere, that at least part of the mechanical issues with Tigers (and especially King Tigers) stemmed from the fact that the sort of bad transmission issues became even worse because due to Efficient German Nazi Issues, new tanks got primarily issued to fresh units, so nervous and probably not very well trained tankers tended to put the transmission to pieces when shifting gears under stress.
|
# ? Oct 30, 2014 22:43 |
|
100 Years Ago gently caress me it's a busy day today. The Germans kick the BEF in the teeth outside Gheluvelt, and at Zandvoorde, and Hollebeke as well. More awful MSPaint maps to illustrate the latest position. There's also attacks at Messines, and Plugstreet too. The First Sea Lord gets run out of the Admiralty on a rail because he was born in Austria, while the Daily Telegraph wails and cries about anti-English sentiment in Germany. And a sharp-eyed lookout in Africa sees a funnel where no funnel should be; Konigsberg has been discovered. This is one of the critical days of 1914. Arquinsiel posted:What kind of tool was this? I could see that almost not being retarded if it was like, a hoe or something. Here's a picture. It came in two variants; the one seen there, and another one with a nasty spike on the top corner of the blade. The idea was that it could be shoved into the parapet of a trench, or the ground in No Man's Land, or the soft parts of an opponent, and bingo! Instant loophole to provide rudimentary cover while firing. Now then. In order to make it bulletproof, it had to be constructed of good, thick, strong steel. I'm not overly familiar with steel, but one thing I do know is that it's loving heavy, especially when you've got 3/16ths of an inch worth of it dangling off your webbing. It weighed about five pounds four ounces (two and a bit kilograms in weird foreign talk), a significant burden on a bloke who in full marching order already weighed about sixty pounds. It also came with an extra-long, extra-heavy, extra-thick, extra-good-at-getting-in-the-way detachable handle. When it was given to people (fortunately, not on active service), the following mild drawbacks were discovered: It wasn't even slightly bulletproof, and even a peashooter could knock an inconveniently-sized hole in it; It was too heavy to easily dig with, and too bulky to easily carry; Its blade was far too blunt to dig properly into the ground; Its giant loophole caused it to vomit dirt off the blade while digging, and; It was too heavy to easily swing at an enemy in hand-to-hand combat, a vital function of any trench spade. Commanders generally refused to issue them, and they were eventually melted down for scrap. A few allegedly wandered their way down to the front, but I'll believe that when I see a picture.
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 00:39 |
|
Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago These are as awesome as always - and now that we're getting into a major extended engagement, the "day at a time" format really shows its value as you can trace the whole thing unfolding now, or go back to read earlier posts to see what led to the current situation. That said, I have a question. From the reading, it seems like the Germans weren't really expecting the Belgians to loose the dykes. Why so? Were they unaware of the possibility, or just not expecting that the Belgians would be willing to flood their country, or were you just skipping over frantic attempts to push on ahead before the dykes went? For that matter, was there much long-term damage to Belgium as a result of the flooding (as opposed to the war proper, I guess )?
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 01:08 |
|
Trin Tragula posted:Commanders generally refused to issue them, and they were eventually melted down for scrap. A few allegedly wandered their way down to the front, but I'll believe that when I see a picture. Refusing to lumber your men with that was probably the best decision made all war. It's like they tried to make a shovel backwards.
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 02:12 |
|
Davin Valkri posted:How is Carius and stuff like Tigers in the Mud regarding the whole Wehrmacht fetishizing thing, anyway? You'd think a guy who drove around a Tiger, is still alive, and named his pharmacy Tiger Apothecary would get a lot of attention from that sort of crowd. Carius is a huge Russophile and stresses that the T-34 and ZiS-3 were very dangerous weapons and Soviet armoured forces and anti-tank guns were not to be underestimated. Wehrmacht fetishists tend to ignore everything about Carius but his claimed K:D ratio (that he himself denies). Kemper Boyd posted:Someone mentioned somewhere, that at least part of the mechanical issues with Tigers (and especially King Tigers) stemmed from the fact that the sort of bad transmission issues became even worse because due to Efficient German Nazi Issues, new tanks got primarily issued to fresh units, so nervous and probably not very well trained tankers tended to put the transmission to pieces when shifting gears under stress. The Tigers had a pretty sweet semi-automatic gearbox that made it really hard to gently caress up shifting gears. The problem was everything else. The final drives would give out, the engines would give out, the track pins would give out... keeping a Tiger or a King Tiger in running order was a massive pain in the rear end. The maintenance company of a Tiger battalion used an order of magnitude more trucks than an Allied maintenance company, IIRC.
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 05:10 |
From Tigers in Combat by Wolfgang Schneider: The vehicle losses (tiger and tiger 2 only) by percentage with cause of loss, organised by battalion. SPA 502 (511) 13% destroyed by crew 82% enemy activity 5% other SPA 503 "Feldherrnhalle" 49% destroyed by crew 45% enemy activity 6% other SPA 504 73% destroyed by crew 27% enemy activity SPA 505 49% destroyed by crew 37% enemy activity 14% other causes [example - 5 August 1943, losses: 1, cause: self-ignition ) SPA 506 58% destroyed by crew 41% enemy activity 1% other SPA 507 55% destroyed by crew 41% enemy activity 4% other SPA 508 59% destroyed by crew 19% enemy activity 22% other causes SPA 509 33% destroyed by crew 63% enemy activity 4% other SPA 510 6% destroyed by crew 94% enemy activity
|
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 07:00 |
|
How many German soldiers were wounded by gunfire in World War I, and how many were killed? How does this compare to other sources of injury like artillery and hand-to-hand weapons?
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 07:23 |
|
Chamale posted:How many German soldiers were wounded by gunfire in World War I, and how many were killed? How does this compare to other sources of injury like artillery and hand-to-hand weapons? Any reason for Germans in particular? Artillery was the biggest killer in both world wars wars, iirc
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 07:41 |
|
Artillery fire was responsible for somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of all casualties on all sides, depending on whose numbers you add up with. The trouble with trying to be precise about German casualties is that different regiments frequently had different methods of recording them (and then all the German state armies had different methods of collating them), and quite a lot of records don't exist any more on account of being destroyed during another war. There's ways to make up for the shortfall by using different sets of records (like those of the medical corps, from aid-posts and field-hospitals and suchlike) or by use of creative estimation and extrapolation, but there's more than enough potential variance to result in things like it being a Matter of Some Debate how many Germans were actually killed or wounded at Mons. Which is important if you're looking at the historiography, because Mons has usually been presented as "we had to retreat, but by Gad, we made them pay for tangling with us!" The BEF reports just over 1,600 casualties; in this context, it now matters whether the Germans took closer to 2,000 or 5,000 casualties. Tomn posted:That said, I have a question. From the reading, it seems like the Germans weren't really expecting the Belgians to loose the dykes. Why so? Were they unaware of the possibility, or just not expecting that the Belgians would be willing to flood their country, or were you just skipping over frantic attempts to push on ahead before the dykes went? They don't appear to have been in any hurry, and it seems they didn't realise how capable the Belgians were, which is pretty much the story of the entire attack on the Yser. It did also take the Belgians several days from going "OK, this is a thing we might have to do" to actually making the drat things flood properly and consistently, it was a more complicated operation than just OPEN EVERYTHING AND BLOW IT UP IF IT WON'T OPEN. If it had been done by British engineers, you can bet that they'd have become renowned like the codebreakers and the Battle of Britain pilots and the Dambusters all rolled into one. (As for the long-term effects of having a four-year flood, again, that's a neglected subject.)
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 10:17 |
|
I decided to find out more about Mussolini's Intelligence service and found it's a relatively hard subject to find on the net, a google search went straight over to Italian language results. I did find this page, which is a useful summary. The Servizio Informazioni Militare was the main agency, and they had several successes. They managed to break the Yugoslav army codes and actually managed to order two advancing Yugoslav divisions to retreat for a day. In the first half of 1942 they were able to read reports from the US military attaché in Cairo, giving them reports sent back to the US on the allied situataion. They also had a naval division that broke low level British naval codes, which they used to avoid planned attacks on convoys to North Africa. Finally, they seemed to be especially efficient at stealing cryptologic information from embassies, having a special section for that purpose. also: The Abwehr never sleeps. Except on Sundays. [edit:] Another page on the effects of the Fellers code intercepts. Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Oct 31, 2014 |
# ? Oct 31, 2014 10:51 |
|
Slavvy posted:From Tigers in Combat by Wolfgang Schneider:
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 12:47 |
|
Shoving a grenade into the gun breech as you bail out of the vehicle that's had its track shot off counts as "destroyed by crew" and not "enemy activity", which is why that number is so high. Also those numbers climb up quite a bit towards the very end of the war, so "gently caress, the Allies are across the river, let's blow this poo poo and book it" counts as "destroyed by crew", despite it being caused by enemy activity, albeit indirectly.
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 13:33 |
|
Oh yeah--whoever drew up that '32 contract also wants the whole thing, from the recruitment until the final Lieferung, to happen within four weeks lol Edit: I always end up imagining the effect that this sort of thing has on the guys down the pipeline, like there's some poor Fourier or Fuehrer somewhere muttering "The Elector of Saxony wants us to what?" and thinking really hard about the state of the roads HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Oct 31, 2014 |
# ? Oct 31, 2014 14:54 |
|
HEY GAL posted:Oh yeah--whoever drew up that '32 contract also wants the whole thing, from the recruitment until the final Lieferung, to happen within four weeks lol Procurement fuckups? In the military?
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 16:29 |
|
|
# ? Apr 18, 2024 12:51 |
|
Phanatic posted:The Manhattan project wasn't that ridiculously expensive, the B-29 cost more. Cost about $24 billion in present dollars. Compare that to the F-35 and weep. This is meaningless because, even setting aside inflation, we're a lot wealthier now than we were in World War II and we can afford more expensive things. Obviously 21st century technology is going to cost more than 1940s technology.
|
# ? Oct 31, 2014 16:56 |